Mar 29, 2012

Field Office Managers Stressed

The National Council of Social Security Management Associations (NCSSMA), an organization of Social Security management personnel, has released its March 2012 newsletter. Hiring is mostly frozen at Social Security. Inevitably, this causes problems since attrition is uneven. Some field offices have no employees leaving but some small offices have several employees leaving. The newsletter has an article on this problem. Some badly affected offices receive help from other components of the agency but others receive no help and struggle. One particularly interesting point is that new telephone systems in field offices allow managers to see just how bad phone service has been in their offices and to allot additional resources. This has improved field office telephone service but at a cost to other workloads. Field office managers also complain that they are forced into more production work such as answering the telephone and working at the reception window. This leaves them inadequate time for management duties and forces them into overtime to try to keep up.

13 comments:

Supervisors do not get time and a half. Many of them make the same on "overtime" as their regular hourly wage. And the money isn't the point anyway, everyone should have the right to a life outside the office - even supervisors.

Many supervisors were promoted based on promises made by management. These individuals don't know their jobs and have no clue how to supervise. They claim to be doing additional work but I just don't see it. Most managers in our area do not call numbers and when they answer the phones they are running around the office trying to get answers. The heart and soul of offices around the nation are the claims representatives. They have to process their workloads but they also have to call numbers. The easy solution is to reduce the number in management as soon as possible. This agency has many useless supervisors and managers that should be claims representatives.

you're kidding, right? service is better than it's ever been. accuracy is up. productivity is way up. like any other well run business, ssa is proving that it is full of talent and that the technology investments this commissioner has made are paying off big time.

No, I am not kidding. The waiting times in SSA offices have increased due to the lack of employees calling numbers. More overtime is being used due to the lack of production. It is laughable how management is still giving themselves all the credit in keeping this agency going. Morale couldn't be worse and retirements have gone up due to the increased stress. What management needs to do is more work and actually earn their paychecks. We all need to produce a better product for the public.